Malcolm Furnass

Like a lot of people, I sometimes wonder what is the meaning of it all. So I looked in a dictionary. "It" means "The subject of an impersonal verb", and "All" means "Whole quantity or number". That's that sorted, then.

Happy birthday to Dennis the Menace!... Wait, whaddya mean that's the wrong one?? From this week's special anniversary edition of Beano, out today! Script by me, art by Shannon Gallant. #dennis75

How come when the sun is out it’s light but when the lights are out it’s dark?

Both Dennis the Menaces debuted in the same week in 1953 purely by coincidence. US Dennis on Monday March 12th, UK Dennis on Wednesday March 14th.

@YourPalFanton I’m so sorry for your loss.

Really sad to report that my son lost his dear mother Naomi recently. We'd been separated for a while, but still were close in raising the boy (and his brother). She was a really talented person, with the kindest soul that shone out of her face like sunbeams. We will miss her 💔

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response: A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. • You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

The difference between them and us is that they think they are right but we know we are right.

In the latest Crewkerne Gazette Bedtime Story, we present “Peter and the Friendly Man”, a tale featuring Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein, about scandal, elite friendships, and bringing the Labour Party into disrepute. {satire}

So… Peter Mountbatten-Mandelson, then?

GREENLAND [In all-caps] The Contrarian , by @deAdder Substack: open.substack.com/pub/deadder/p/…

Yet another despot he admires: did I just hear Trump saying he’s looking forward to going to Switzerland and meeting Davros?

William Caxton was not one to frequent public houses. His type was not welcome there.

“Where is Vader?” “He’s left to join Reform, sir.”

try reducing the price

Also facing an imminent threat of annexation: Halfords.